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Long Live Harry

Ever since J. K. Rowling announced that she might, in Book 7, kill off Harry Potter, my 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, has taken to asking, as often as possible, and with the impish air of She Who Speaks What Must Not Be Said: "Mommy, did you hear that Harry's going to die?"

At which point my 9-year-old daughter, Julia, shouts, "Maybe will die," and I avert my eyes and become very busy trying to find some multiplication flash cards.

Julia and I, long ago, came to an understanding. We wanted to make the transition from picture books to chapter books. But Julia was terrified of narrative tension — cliffhanger pauses, unanswered questions, any sense of foreboding or even of too-strong anticipation. To help her deal with navigating the world of children's fiction, I taught her some simple rules:

1. If something bad happens, things will get better.

2. If there are challenges, the hero will rise above them.

3. Harry Potter will never die.

Now, I'm avoiding the conversation on Harry's fate altogether. This is because:

1. I can't bear to think about it, and

2. I just don't know what the repercussions will be if my lessons about narrative structure turn out to be a load of bunk.

I do not know what will happen to Julia's inner world if Harry Potter dies. I fear — and I am not exaggerating here — that if Harry is killed, a piece of Julia will die as well. For Julia doesn't just read the Harry Potter books, she lives them: on play dates, in her head, when she's supposed to be paying attention in school, and at night, when she can't get to sleep, and I tell her to imagine herself cozy in her four-poster bed at Hogwarts, with a book of spells on her night table and a package of chocolate frogs hidden in her trunk.

I know that they do, because I made it though childhood in much the same way. From the time that I was about the age when Julia first became obsessed with Harry, I too had a place of escape. For years — for longer than I should, really, admit — I found sanctuary in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I fought insomnia by imagining that I was safe in the Ingalls's house, snuggled up against my blind sister, Mary, with a South Dakota blizzard wind howling outside my window. Pa's gun would be over the door; his blue eyes would twinkle as his fingers danced over the strings of his fiddle. "Laura was no longer cold but she shivered," I'd think. And I'd fall asleep.

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It's easy, these days, to understand why the No. 1 hit children's series of the age would be Harry Potter. All you have to do is experience the adrenaline rush of watching Fox TV's "24" to appreciate the addictive appeal of a hero who breaks the rules, shatters the mold, stands alone and beats the odds, every time, in combating Supreme Evil.

Though Harry Potter's birth preceded our 9/11-conditioned era by a number of years, Julia discovered him at precisely the time that she learned of the downing of the twin towers. She learned of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and (despite my best efforts) Adolf Hitler at just the time when she was deepening her understanding of the dark Lord Voldemort. Just as I took refuge in Pa Ingalls's house precisely at the time, in the mid-1970's, when the anxieties of being a "tween" overwhelmed me, Julia found solace behind the thick walls of Hogwarts when she most needed protection.

Nine can be a tough age under any circumstances. But in our age, with the family room TV beaming in not just Britney but news of falling bodies and beheadings, a series of books in which small-bodied Good defeats disembodied Evil can be just what the doctor ordered.

Whatever terror Harry experiences is controlled terror; it has no life outside the page. Villains, too, are not immortal once you break beyond the bindings of J. K. Rowling's realm. What greater comfort today — what greater source of power — for a child who has lived through airplanes becoming missiles, the Washington-area sniper, and now, daily storms that she takes as a sign of deadly global warming, than to have the ability to shut the book and walk away?

Judith Warner, the author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" and a contributing columnist for TimesSelect, will be a guest columnist through the end of July.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Long Live Harry. Today's Paper|Subscribe